All the lights in the apartment went out this evening. Exciting! I tried flipping the breakers back on again, but nope.
So I called some random electricians… and they arrived within half an hour! And identified the problem within twenty minutes! It was the outlet seen above, which had had a meltdown. It smells pretty funky, I can tell you.
Doesn’t it look a bit suspicious? The screw that has the wire that ran warm is of a different colour than the rest? And a slightly different shape. Are they supposed to look like that, or did the previous electrician jerry-rig something from different parts…?
Anyway: I’m impressed, and it’s nice that they didn’t have to tear down the walls or anything to find the problem. And now I’ve got lights and heat again, which is nice.
The screw has probably just oxidized from the heat and the melted plastic makes it look different from the others. It looks like it has a collar to not drop out when loosened.
I would suspect the burnt insulation on the blue wire. If it is line (could be, if the Norwegian standard when the installation was done matches the old Swedish one), wear from vibrations in the building, or a sloppy stripping job could have lead to a short against the earth wire and arcing.
If the outlet was on a GFCI, the above scenario is unlikely, then someone probably forgot to tighten the screw, or stripped the threads, or something broke in the part grabbing the cable end.